Murder Mystery: Innocence Devoured
The year she died, Leslie posed for a picture with second cousin.
photographs courtesy of the Haag family
It was the day following Halloween, a scary time of year for children. After hearing a few fairy tales about ravenous wolves and other monsters, it’s easy to imagine one hiding behind every tree.
On that Nov. 1, 1985, Leslie Dawn Haag was 14 years old, no longer a child who believed in Little Red Riding Hood, but not yet a woman. She got out of school that day and went to her grandmother’s house, which was on the way to her own home in a Fort Smith, Ark., neighborhood across from Bailey Hill Reservoir. It was normal for Haag to stop and visit with her grandmother for a while. Afterwards, one of her aunts gave her a ride the rest of the way home. Patricia, Haag’s mother, was busy cooking supper, and when Haag asked permission to go to her older sister’s house just three blocks away, Patricia said she didn’t mind as long as she got back before dark. The teenager promised she would, though it was already dusk.
When Haag’s stepfather, Kenneth Dodson, got home from work, he and Patricia ate, but soon became concerned about Haag’s absence. It wasn’t like her to go against her mother’s wishes. The two were “as close as peas in a pod,” according to one of her sisters.
“She was very obedient,” the sister said. She went on to describe Haag as “shy, reserved and tough but with a sense of humor.”
Kenneth and Patricia started searching for Haag, first at her sister’s house, then her grandmother’s. Neither woman had seen her. None of the neighbors knew where she was either. Patricia then thought of Bailey Hill Reservoir, a big concrete reservoir atop a hill. Kids were known to hang out there, as Haag sometimes did. Her mother and stepfather looked around and were just about to give up when Kenneth lit a cigarette. By the flash of the match, he saw what looked like a body lying on the ground. He approached while lighting another match and saw that it was, indeed, a body … Leslie Haag’s body. While a grief-stricken Patricia stayed with her lifeless daughter, Kenneth ran down the road to a neighbor’s house and called police at 8:03 p.m. He reported that he and his wife had found his stepdaughter murdered at Bailey Hill Reservoir in the 1500 block of South S Street.
Haag had been strangled manually as well as with a shoelace. Her shirt had been pulled up over her breasts, her pants and underwear were pulled down to her ankles, and her shoes had been taken off. An autopsy revealed that contrary to first supposition, Haag had not been sexually assaulted. At least, there was no penetration, because her clothing was in disarray, it was thought she might have been fondled.
According to Det. Adam Creek with the Fort Smith Police Department, one man has remained a solid suspect through the years. He was a cousin to the family and had lived in Missouri before moving to Arkansas where he stayed with Haag’s grandmother. Police have interrogated him several times, but he has maintained his innocence. He indulged in a sexual liaison with one of Haag’s sisters, but she was uncomfortable with the situation and did not cultivate the relationship. This man also made inappropriate remarks of a sexual nature to Haag and displayed improper behavior in her presence. He has failed several polygraph tests, and his alibi — that he was with a neighbor at the time of the murder — doesn’t hold up. The neighbor denied that they were together.
Haag’s sister, with whom the suspect had engaged in sex, accompanied investigators to the Bailey Hill Reservoir and showed them where she and the suspect had the sexual encounter. It was the same place where Haag’s body was found. Some beer bottles were strewn about, and Leslie’s sister said the suspect drank the same brand of beer. All of the physical evidence was examined for fingerprints and DNA, but the tests were inconclusive at the time.
“With the change in technology,” Det. Creek said recently, “I thought it to be a good idea to test the evidence again, and I am working with the crime lab to get that done.”
Forensic investigators used enhanced DNA analyses to catch Gary Ridgway aka “The Green River Killer” almost 15 years after he first gave a saliva sample to detectives. Beginning in the early 1980s, Ridgway killed 48 women. He picked them up for sex, strangled them and disposed of many of their bodies in or near the Green River in the Seattle-Tacoma area of Oregon. A mousy, little man, Ridgway was first contacted by police in 1983. The following year, he was questioned by police a second time but passed a polygraph exam. Then in 1987, when he was taken into police custody again, he allowed the authorities to take the saliva sample from him. Fast forward to 2001, when crime labs were using new DNA methods that enabled them to test very small amounts of trace evidence. The forensic experts were able to swab the ligatures on the victims for cellular material, and this advance in science provided the Green River Task Force with the evidence they needed. Faced with irrefutable proof of his crimes, Ridgway pled guilty and was given multiple life sentences without parole.
Improved DNA technology has led to at least 280 exonerations of wrongfully-convicted people in the United States, and the real suspects and/or perpetrators have been identified in 44 percent of those cases, according to The Innocence Project.
Could Haag’s killer still be brought to justice? Even though more than 25 years have passed since the crime, and the No. 1 suspect moved back to Missouri after the slaying? It isn’t called “the long arm of the law” for nothing.
Anyone with information regarding the murder of Leslie Dawn Haag should call the Fort Smith Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division at (479) 709-5116.
